Sunday, February 08, 2004

Excellent O'Connor editorial

This story is an excellent editorial on Justice O'Connor, courtesy of Mr. Bashman, and written by U of C visiting (perhaps permanent, we shall see!) professor John Yoo.

I think Professor Yoo makes many excellent points, and obviously the editorial is a short analysis, but I think he understates the instability O'Connor's jurisprudence causes outside of politics as well. Professor Yoo writes that the result of O'Connor's jurisprudential philosophy is "unclear laws... instability in[] our politics as presidents, members of Congress, agencies, states and ordinary citizens have less and less an idea of what the Constitution means." Clearly Professor Yoo is correct. When we "don't know what the Constitution says" we can't identify which activities are legal or illegal, protected or unprotected, etc. and therefore become totally subservient to the judiciary. Justice O'Connor exemplifies the rule of judges over the rule of law.

Kudos to Professor Yoo for distilling complex legal and policy issues into an easily digestible format. Good times.

On the other side of th aisle, it's interesting to see how the sports world is digesting Maurice Clarett's 70-plus page antitrust ruling. As law students and lawyers, I think we often lose the forest for the trees - and it's interesting to see how legal rulings are interpreted in the court of public opinion. See here, for example.